Monday, June 01, 2009

6 years post SARS

May 31st 2003 was the day Singapore was declared SARS free. 6 years down, Singapore's got a couple of cases of H1N1 that authorities fear would develop into another social catastrophe the way SARS did. 6 years ago, amidst celebration of being germ free, Packrat and I got married. 6 years after, amidst another uncertain time, we celebrated our 6th year.

Has it changed? The way we celebrated it? Yes. This year has been a lean year for us because we've bought a flat, renovated it and are in the midst of furnishing it all the while, surviving on one salary. So yes, it is lean. Usually, we spend our anniversaries overseas. Melbourne, Perth, Vancouver...or we make a big deal out of it with gifts, by going some place nice for dinner and checking into our favourite hotel, the Ritz-Carlton. But this year, we stayed in town, checked ourselves into a cheaper hotel and had breakfast at the coffee shop across the road from the hotel.

Is it true that after a couple of years, things get staid? After all, we are approaching the 7 year itch. Will it really itch? I hope not. But yes, it is different. There were no flowers, no big gifts or gestures of love. Did that mean that we were in the slammer and would have to sleep on the couch? Not really. I think after 6 years, there are more important things that overt gestures of gifts. Yes, the both of us still love gifts and still love being surprised. But I've never been big on sparkling gifts that come in pretty blue boxes with a white bow around it. They are nice, I'd be thrilled but it's not important to me.What is important to me is that Packrat is around, spends time talking to me and we can hold hands, snuggle and do silly couple things like walk about town late at night drinking bubble tea and people watching. And this weekend, was just about that.

But even with that, reality crept in. Albeit in a nice way. We took advantage of the fact that for 2 days, we had no parental responsibilities and went and got our flat furnished. As we are trying to do it on a budget, we found ourselves at our first auction. We managed to snag a dining table we wanted but lost a coffee table to a mistake and lost a storage table and a bar table/ stool set because we weren't just being too tight-fisted.



Next time, we know to be more discerning and a little bit more bold. But for a marriage that was built on a common thirst for new experiences, it was apt that on our anniversary, we ventured into buying second hand furniture. Call it making the best of a bad situation or whatever, we had fun.

Check out Diaperbag to find out how the twins celebrated our anniversary with us.

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Ondine tossed this thought in at 22:34

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